Revisiting the original Rough Guide

Michael Kerr reviews The Art of Travel Or Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries by Francis Galton

12:01AM BST 11 May 2001

FRANCIS GALTON did not travel lightly. No man, he believed, should head for South Africa without "five days of jerked meat, at 3lbs a day". He was equally prescriptive about what to do on arrival: "When rank birds are shot they should be skinned, not plucked"; "Avoid sleeping in slight hollows during clear, still weather."

If he had little time for doubt, he must have given less to sleep. He is best known today for his study of eugenics, but in his 89 years he wrote nine books and 200 papers on subjects from fingerprinting to meteorology. He also travelled widely, both in Europe and in then unexplored parts of southwestern Africa.

"A passion for travel seized me as if I were a migratory bird," he said. He was similarly gripped by a need to note down tips and hints and pass them on. Hence The Art, which in eight editions between 1855 and 1893 became the handbook of young men leaving "Christendom" for "Savagedom". Within its pages they learnt, among other things, how to distil water with a kettle and a gun barrel, take a strong man prisoner and teach an ass not to bray.

This edition first appeared in 1872, by which time the explorer's traditional sweetener was losing its worth. The chief at Lake Ngami, he reports, told a visitor that "his beads would be of little use, for the women about the place already `grunted like pigs' under the burdens of those that they wore".

Galton would doubtless be pained that his manual is no longer an essential but an entertainment (and a hugely enjoyable one). It is hardly his fault that travellers now shoot big cats only with a camera and thus have little need of his advice on "setting a spring gun for leopards".

You laugh aloud at his contrivances, and then you think of those cushions on which aircraft passengers must wiggle their feet to avoid deep-vein thrombosis. You bridle in a modern way at his cautions against the thieving of "natives", and then you see, on the Foreign Office website, a warning that "pickpocketing and handbag-snatching are common in some of the larger Spanish cities".

There are lines, too, that will never need revision: "Camels are only fit for a few countries, and require practised attendants."

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